ABSTRACT: I grew up listening to Juluka and Ipi Ntombi, so it seemed kind of natural to have the leatherbacks setting out from Gabon do so using some kind of African-ish guitar figures. The rest – kalimba, flutes, short lyrical phrases – kind of grew out of that. The erhu and the distorted guitar parts… well, those kind of fit.

Why leatherbacks? They travel. Big, patient creatures. Like, really big (practically a SmartCar). And, as recently discovered, really patient (swimming five years in a straight line across the Atlantic). Maybe not as dramatic as black forests or disappearing planets, but there’s poetry in that kind of single-mindedness. The world may shift like ocean waves, but an unseen call keeps them on course. They could sleep for miles.

On the technology side, I found a new thing (thanks to the Reaper forums) that makes netbook recording work better: treat Reaper like a game and use Game Booster. It’s a program that shuts down background tasks so the only thing running is the game – in this case, the audio recorder. More CPU! Didn’t lose vocal takes to skips, freezes or crashes. Didn’t have to do so many submixes to get the parts I wanted… which, halfway to my surprise, meant the mix turned out better than usual. Good trick, that.

Something to Believe In

You could write a review of this album on .

That would be generous.

"Is it a fact—or have I dreamt it—that, by means of electricity, the world of matter has become a great nerve, vibrating thousands of miles in a breathless point of time?"— Nathaniel Hawthorne, The House of the Seven Gables, 1851